Tag Archives: Lawyer

Jews of the Week: Zalman Posner and Herb Gray

In Memory of Two Great Jews

Herb Gray

Herbert Eser Gray (1931-2014) was born in Windsor, Ontario, the son of Belorussian-Jewish immigrants. He practiced as a lawyer after receiving a degree from Osgoode Hall, before being elected to parliament in 1962. He became the first Jewish cabinet minister in Canada’s history. He would go on to be re-elected a whopping twelve times, setting a record as the longest-serving Canadian parliamentarian in history. During this time, he served in multiple roles including Leader of the Opposition, Solicitor General, and even Deputy Prime Minister. After retiring from politics, he was the Chancellor of Carleton University. Awarded a great many honours, including the Order of Canada, he was just one of a few people to be granted the title “The Right Honourable”, and was nicknamed the “Godfather of Politics”. Beloved by his constituents and on Parliament Hill, Herb Gray sadly passed away last week.

Rabbi Zalman Posner

Just two days after came the sad news of the passing of Rabbi Zalman Posner (1927-2014). Born in Israel to parents who fled the Soviet Union, Posner’s family later immigrated to the U.S. to help in stimulating Jewish community life. After the Holocaust, Posner went to Europe to help survivors and refugees in DP camps. In 1949, he took up the post as Chabad rabbi of Nashville, Tennessee, and went on to serve as Nashville’s rabbi for 53 years. During this time, he helped open the community’s first Jewish schools, brought Jewish life onto university campuses, became renowned internationally as a profound lecturer, published eight popular books on Judaism, along with penning dozens of intriguing articles, and inspired countless people around the world. Rabbi Posner passed away last Wednesday, and is survived by his five children, and many more grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Words of the Week

A well from which you drank, cast not a stone into it.
– Midrash Rabbah, Bamidbar 22:4

Jew of the Week: Irwin Cotler

Irwin Cotler

Irwin Cotler (b. 1940) was born in Montreal and studied law at McGill University. After continuing his education at Yale, he returned to McGill as a law professor, and directed its Human Rights Program for over 25 years. As an expert on international and human rights law, Cotler served as a counsel for famous political prisoners like Nelson Mandela, Maher Arar, and Natan Sharansky. He has advised the Middle East peace process, and was involved in the Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt. In the 1980s, he served as President of the Canadian Jewish Congress, while also working to combat apartheid in South Africa. In 1999, he was elected as a Canadian Member of Parliament with a landslide victory that gave him 92% of the vote, described as “the most stunning electoral victory in this century.” Between 2003 and 2006, he served as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and has been lauded for his work in ensuring human rights and citizen privacy, particularly in the face of increasingly restrictive anti-terrorism legislation. He has worked against discrimination, anti-Semitism, and racism, appointing two women to the Supreme Court (making Canada’s the most gender-representative in the world), and appointing the first aboriginals and visible minorities to appellate courts. He issued the first national initiative against racism, worked to bring justice to victims of the Rwanda massacres, and even to indict former Iranian President Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide. Cotler reverted more wrongful convictions than any other minister in history. Having been re-elected as MP no less than 5 times, Cotler recently announced that he will not seek further re-election, and is ready to retire, though he intends to remain very active in social justice and peace activism. Awarded ten honourary degrees and the Order of Canada, Irwin Cotler is described as a key global player “in the struggle for justice, peace and human rights.”

Words of the Week

And God said: “. . . Abraham shall be a great people . . . Because I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him that they shall keep the way of God, to do righteousness and justice.”
– Genesis 18:17–19

Jew of the Week: Louis Brandeis

Robin Hood of the Law

Louis Brandeis

Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856-1941) was born in Kentucky to Jewish immigrants from Prague. Despite his own family’s secularism, Brandeis’ role model and inspiration growing up was his uncle Naphtali Dembitz, a religious Jew, and in his honour Brandeis changed his middle name to Dembitz. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he achieved the highest grade point average in the school’s history – a record that stood for 80 years. This distinction, among others, led to his acceptance to the Massachussets bar without even taking the exam! Working at a Boston law firm, Brandeis quickly became famous as the “People’s Lawyer”, always defending the little guy, focusing on the public good, and refusing to take cases where he believed the defendant was guilty. Brandeis fought successfully against corruption, corporate power and consumerism, monopolies and banks; he fought for healthy workplace hours and wages, better living conditions for the poor and a host of other public causes. More amazingly, he stopped accepting payment for this work. In 1916, Brandeis was nominated to the Supreme Court, one of the most controversial events in U.S. political history. It caused such a great furor that for the first time ever a public hearing was held. Brandeis was termed “dangerous”, not only because he was a Jew, but as was later said, “because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible…” Brandeis’ confirmation to the Supreme Court came a month later, in a process that normally took a single day. He would serve as supreme court justice for 23 years. Meanwhile, Brandeis was also a lifelong Zionist, and served as president of the Provisional Executive Committee for Zionist Affairs. In his later years he donated generously to Israel. Nicknamed ‘Robin Hood of the Law’, he is most remembered for upholding free speech and individual privacy, crusading for the public, and revolutionizing many aspects of American law. Brandeis passed away on the eve of Sukkot.

Words of the Week

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.
– Confucius